


Parallels and Divergences

by thegrumblingirl



Category: The Fugitive (1993), U.S. Marshals (1998)
Genre: M/M, and the kids are pretty much done with watching Sam mope about, damn those plot bunnies, set during U.S. Marshals, they've got themselves another fugitive and it brings back memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 09:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during and post-U.S. Marshals. Chasing Mark Sheridan across the country brings back memories of that other time Sam Gerard was hunting an innocent man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much love for The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, I couldn't help myself.

Sam wiped the perspiration off his forehead with the cuff of his suit and brushed past Richard, telling him, “I need the rest.” He pushed away the twang of disappointment when the fugitive — ex-fugitive, now — didn’t laugh but continued to look to and fro between him and Dr Nichols with big, uncertain eyes. Granted, the Samuel Gerard brand of crime scene humour took some getting used to.

“C’mon,” he turned back and nudged Richard’s elbow with an outstretched hand. To his credit, the other man didn’t visibly flinch. Around the corner, Sam heard the thundering footsteps of Newman and Biggs. “Grab Nichols off the floor,” he ordered as they came into view.

“Yo!” the kid called and flashed them a curious look while bounding over to the real villain of the piece.

“Where’s Cosmo?” Biggs asked, unclipping the cuffs from his belt. Sam’s eyes went wide for a second.

“Shit,” he hissed. “Richard, with me.” He set off at a jog; Kimble, who was still limping, had a little trouble keeping up, but didn’t complain.

“What’s wrong?” he asked instead, reading the situation and Sam’s urgency correctly.

“One of my team went down here with me. I heard clanging earlier, Nichols must’ve got him. Cosmo? _Cos_ -mo!” They ducked and weaved between the containers and equipment, Sam barking Cosmo’s name with increasing volume. Eventually, Richard stopped and cocked his head.

“I heard a groan. Over here!” He ran into the gap between a bunch of containers as fast as his leg would allow, Sam at his heels. As they rounded a corner, they found Cosmo on the floor, holding his head, muttering expletives under his breath. Richard was on his knees beside him a moment later.

“Don’t move your head,” he instructed calmly. “What’s your name?” Sam drew breath to answer for Cosmo, but Richard shot him a look and he clamped his mouth shut and mentally slapped himself — with a head injury, Cosmo needed to answer these questions himself. Sam moved further forward, in case he was needed, but didn’t speak, watching Kimble work instead.

“Deputy Cosmo Renfro, U.S. Marshal’s Office,” came the reply from behind Cosmo’s hands. Richard looked to Sam for confirmation, who nodded.

“Very good, Deputy,” Richard replied while gently prying Cosmo’s fingers away. “I need a flashlight,” he said without looking up as he carefully examined Cosmo’s neck. His tone was placid, but Sam could hear the authority of a surgeon in his element coming through. He quickly dug a department-issue flashlight out of his pocket and held it out for the doctor to take. As he stepped closer yet, Cosmo became aware of his presence and his eyes snapped up to him.

“Sammy? You ok? Where are Nichols and Kimble?”

Gerard crouched down next to his friend. “Nichols is unconscious and in our custody. Kimble is the one with his hands currently around your neck, so try to behave.” Cosmo’s eyes nearly popped out of his sockets, but he had the sense not to move his head. “Relax, Cosmo, he’s the one who knocked Nichols out for me. He had your gun, you know.”

“Deputy,” Richard interrupted, more force behind his tone this time. Sam looked over at him, but found him entirely focused on his patient. Cosmo looked over as well, bewildered. Without preamble, Richard examined his eyes with the flashlight, then told him to follow the finger he was holding up with his eyes. “Do you know what day it is, Deputy Renfro?”

“It’s the day you’ve been giving me a whole lotta grief, Doctor,” Cosmo shot back before shutting his eyes and giving another groan. “Too loud,” he mumbled. Richard gave a grim smile.

“Are you feeling dizzy? Any double vision, headache?”

“Well, I’m not sure I can stand up without keeling over, but I see each of you only once. Head’s pounding, though.”

“No wonder with that kind of impact.” Sam followed Richard’s gaze up and, squinting, he could see blood on the swinging joist hanging from the ceiling. “Deputy Gerard,” Richard called Sam back to him, looking at him with his eyes clear, his face earnest. “Call EMS, tell them he’ll need that head wound bound and a neck brace, just in case. The vertebrae feel fine, but transport will knock him about enough to aggravate the concussion.”

Sam nodded, grabbed his radio, and did just that.

“So you really didn’t kill your wife, huh?” Cosmo chose that moment to ask Richard, who had just managed to sit down properly next to him, wobbling a little when his leg wouldn’t hold him properly. Sam glared at Cosmo from the side, not that he noticed.

Richard looked up, surprised, but blinked only once before answering. “No, I really didn’t.” He seemed more confident this time, as if it was slowly registering with him that he was surrounded by law enforcement officers who knew the truth and believed him. That was until two seconds later his face twisted with a flash of grief that hurt to see even in the half-dark. Richard looked down at the floor, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t.”

Cosmo had the grace to look sheepish behind his headache.

“I’ll have to put cuffs on you before we head out, Richard,” Sam cut through the awkward moment. “But first, we’ll get you to a restroom, clean yourself up a bit.”

Kimble nodded, then drew a deep breath. “What’s going to happen next?”

“You’re coming with us. What are you looking at me like that for? There’s no way I’m giving you to CPD, they’d manage to stick you in jail for being a cop killer and not care about the rest. You’ll remain in my custody until we’ve taken everyone’s statements and re-opened your case while sticking the charges on Nichols, Sykes, and Devlin MacGregor. As soon as that happens and your record is clean again, you’ll be a free man.”

Surprise still etched into Richard’s expression, they were interrupted by the EMTs arriving. Sam leapt up to get out of their way, rounding Cosmo’s feet to help Richard up. “C’mon, let’s get you out of here.”

Trusting his kids to keep the press outside, Sam led Richard to the restrooms that branched off the lobby of the hotel. Kimble winced when he caught a good look at himself in the mirrors. Gerard pulled paper towels out of the dispenser and handed them to the doctor without a word. Richard took them with a mumbled, “Thanks,” then wetted them under the tap and started scrubbing the blood off the right side of his face and ear. Sam leaned against the tiled wall and crossed his arms in front of his chest, watching.

“Missed a spot,” he drawled and pointed as Richard turned over the ball of towels to find a clean edge. Richard shot him a look and drew breath as if to say something, but then shook his head at himself, keeping quiet. Sam didn’t ask.

Noah, Biggs, Henry, and Poole were waiting for them outside the restroom. "Alright, Richard," Sam said quietly. Richard held out his hands, corners of his mouth turned down and an uneasy set to his shoulders. Sam unclipped his cuffs and slid them around Richard's wrists. "This won't end like the other time," Sam assured him, trying to catch his gaze. Seeing whatever he saw in Sam’s face, Richard relaxed. “Do you want someone’s jacket to…?” Sam gestured vaguely at Kimble’s now bound hands. The doctor shook his head. Sam frowned at him, his silence unnerving him a little. He shook it off. “Moving out,” he gave the curt command to his team.

Sticking close to Richard, he watched Poole take the lead out of the corner of his eye. As they stepped out through the hotel’s main doors, the clamour of the press was no surprise. Gerard surveyed the crowd for threats automatically, but then kept his attention on the man beside him. Flanked by Noah and Biggs, with Poole clearing a path and Henry hollering and batting away camera lenses and microphones, something like a self-conscious smile seemed to tug at the corners of Richard’s mouth. Press and Chicago PD alike kept at bay by the Marshals, he was safe.

Steering Kimble to the car, the Marshals made quick work of the trek down the stairs. Sam opened the door for him, then rounded the trunk to get to the other side, signalling for Poole to get him an ice pack. Getting into the car beside Richard, he pulled out his keys.

“Lemme see those hands, Doctor.” Kimble obeyed readily, albeit with a confused look aimed in his direction. Sam uncuffed him, then threw the things onto the dashboard of the car. “Poole, give me that thing!” Poole’s hand appeared through the window, handing him that ice pack. Gerard shook it up and squeezed it, then put it on Richard’s knee, whose hands had just fallen back into his lap. Then, he angled his body so he was facing Richard, draping his arm along the back of the seat, his left hand gripping the driver’s seat, shielding the doctor from view through the window.

Finally, something like a challenge ventured back onto Richard’s face. “I thought you didn’t care.”

Sam couldn’t help the shark-like grin that split his mouth. “I don’t. Don’t tell anybody, ok?” He also couldn’t help patting Richard’s back below the collar of his suit. Sam banged his left hand against the window to get his people to get a move on, but he relaxed into the car seat at the amusement now clearly showing on Richard’s features.

They drove off, leaving a fugitive behind and taking an innocent man home.


	2. Easier to Run

Five years later, in the summer of 1998, Richard Kimble had just come home from another graveyard shift at Chicago Memorial Hospital — dead on his feet, to coin a phrase. He winced as he stretched, feeling at least some of the kinks in his back settling. As he passed through the den, he flicked on the TV to catch the news. He would tell any of his patients that watching the box late at night before bed was bad for their sleeping patterns, but as doctors went, even Kimble didn’t always listen to his own advice. Not tonight, anyway.

With a federal fugitive on the loose and, consequently, all over the newscasts, Kimble was suddenly meeting news reporters’ faces he’d never seen before. He dropped his duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs, then went back and dropped onto the sofa just as the news item he was waiting for come up.

Apparently, Gerard had chased the fugitive into a senior residence in New York — what was it with that man and healthcare facilities, Richard managed to smile to himself before his jaw went slack and his mind blank. Newman. The fugitive had shot Newman. Noah, the kid, one of the agents who’d guided him out of the Hilton that night. He’d also sat with him in court a couple of times, during some of the many hearings to convict Sykes and Chuck Nichols of Helen’s murder, and before that, he’d brought him endless cups of coffee during the lengthy and exhausting interrogation at the Marshal’s Office. When, at 7am, he’d returned not only with coffee, but with a glass of water, Aspirin, and a danish, Richard had expected a mocking comment from Gerard. Instead, the Deputy had just looked at Newman from the side and asked, “What, Richard gets a danish, but I don’t even get a donut with sprinkles? You all like him more than me or something?” He’d then broken out a variety of puppy dog eyes that Newman must have been rather familiar with, because he’d merely sighed and gone in search of donuts. He’d returned not much later, true to form, with a packet of sprinkled donuts, receiving a pat on the back from Gerard and a tired half-smile from himself.

Richard continued staring at the TV, unseeing. The kid was dead.

* * *

 

Gerard stood as tall as he could in that quilt he was drowning in, taking a deep breath. “We got a fugitive,” he said to himself, letting the word roll off his tongue. The very last time he’d said this had been five years ago. He didn’t care to examine what that meant, exactly, or what it should apparently mean, instead steeling himself for the mountain of grunt work, chasing around, and profiling ahead of him.

Trust his kids to burst that bubble, though.

Sam had just come to grips with having that rookie Royce on his team, cagey as he was presenting himself to be, when Cosmo came up next to him where he was staring at the map and the pinned-up parts of the file they had on Roberts.

“Remember what happened the last time we had a fugitive?” His voice was pitched low, but in the relative quiet that had spread through the roadside diner, the words still carried. Sam didn’t need eyes in the back of his head to know that the kids were paying attention.

“Last time, we caught the killer.”

Cosmo kept giving him that sidelong look for a little longer, but when Sam didn’t turn towards him, he sighed and moved back to one of the tables. At that, Sam did turn a fraction and saw Cosmo shaking his head at a typically wildly gesticulating Biggs.

 

*

It took Royce only a day to bring it up.

“What about the last time you had a fugitive?” he asked, parking himself in the doorway to Sam’s office. Sam had just put down the receiver with more force than strictly necessary. He sat back in the chair, his mouth set in a thin line, already knowing that that wouldn’t inspire Royce to let it go.

“Ever heard of Dr Richard Kimble?”

Royce’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “That was your case? Huh.” Royce shrugged, then moved to walk back to his desk. He’d taken two steps before he turned back, coming closer again. “That’s what that comment about this guy going out of his way to let people live was for, right? You having doubts about this one, too?”

“You don’t have any doubts, of course.”

“Not without probable cause I don’t. What did Kimble do that made you piss off Chicago PD so much?”

“He dove off a dam into a spillway rather than shoot me or give himself up, for starters.”

Royce took one hand out of his trouser pocket and pointed at the evidence board. “Well, see? He shot you.”

“In the vest, not in the head. He’s former black ops, he wouldn’t have missed.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. You started this conversation, remember?” Sam got up and pushed past Royce out of his office, into the bullpen. “Biggs, where’s that prison guard at?”

 

*

“Have you talked to Kimble recently, by the way?”

“I’m in the middle of a manhunt, Marshal Walsh, I don’t exactly have the time to ring people up. Especially not Richard. Why are you always asking me these questions when we’re on a plane? Scared I’ll just run away when we’re on the ground?”

“You’ve proven yourself capable of exactly that before, Deputy. Mind you, you could lock yourself up in the toilet,” Walsh suggested mercilessly. Sam sighed and looked out the window. “Sam.” He turned back to face her. "I met him at a charity function recently, you know, and he told me pretty much the same thing. Except he doesn't bring a 5'6'' tall beard in stilettos to a party, unlike certain other people I know."

Sam ignored that last remark with aplomb. “Why is everyone so keen on bringing him up? We’ve got other things to worry about.”

“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps because this is your first border-crossing manhunt since then, and because he practically lived at the office with you for two months because CPD were trying to get to him. We all know what happens when something rubs your instincts the wrong way, Sam.”

 

*

**FIVE YEARS EARLIER**

“Alright, Doctor, this is your temporary ID, your temporary driver’s license, and you need to sign here. And these,” Cosmo continued while producing a bundle of keys from his jacket pocket, “are the keys to a motel room not far from here. You can stay there until the court unfreezes your accounts and property.”

“Thank you, Deputy. How’s your head?” Richard asked as he signed his name where Cosmo had indicated.

“A lot better, actually. Also, don’t thank me, thank Sam. He went nose-to-nose with the boss on this.”

“Speaking of Big Dog, where is he?” Henry asked from where he was sitting at his desk, phone receiver tucked between his ear and shoulder.

“He was heading downstairs just as I was coming up,” Renfro shrugged. “He didn’t look happy, either.”

He’d barely finished talking when the door to the bullpen was pushed open so hard that it bounced off the wall. Gerard stalked into the room, face like thunder.

“Sam?” Cosmo queried.

“Kelly and Rosetti were downstairs. Wanted to just waltz in and have a word with our favourite fugitive.” The team and Richard followed Sam with their eyes as he rounded their desks and threw himself into a chair close to the fugitive in question.

Cosmo blinked. “They came here?!”

Sam shrugged. “Just like that. I knew they’d pull something like that, that’s why I told the folks downstairs to call me soon as they caught sight of them.”

“They’ve got balls,” Poole commented from across the pen.

“Not for much longer,” Gerard growled, staring darkly at the desktop.

“What did they want?” Richard asked quietly. Sam’s eyes snapped up to meet his, as if he’d quite forgotten he was there for a moment.

“You,” he replied simply. “They’re still insisting that the investigation into your wife’s death and that of the cop on the el is their case and jurisdiction and that we’ve got no authority to keep handling you the way we are.”

“Ugh,” Biggs scoffed. “As if they had any leverage against us!”

“Well, don’t they?” Richard asked, urgency creeping into his tone.

“Richard,” Sam pulled his focus back to him. “They screwed up the initial investigation and they’ve been biased against you from the get-go. No court is going to try and force us to hand you over. This case involves Devlin MacGregor now, too. It’s our turf. You’re not on the run anymore.” Sam kept his gaze locked with Richard’s until the other man nodded and the tense line of his shoulders relaxed. “Good. Now, I’ve got something to discuss with my team that’s not for your ears. Would you mind waiting in my office until we can go over the details of the drug trials?”

“Of course not,” Richard gathered his temporary IDs and keys from the desk and made himself scarce.

As soon as the door to Sam’s office had closed behind him, Sam’s glare came back full force. “Any move those miscreant detectives make in Richard’s direction, I wanna know about it. I wasn’t very nice to them, but I’m not sure if that’ll keep them from trying.”

“Jesus, Sammy, what did you say to them?”

“What does it matter? Just don’t believe everything people tell you.”

“Sam.”

Sam sighed, then rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. “The words, ‘he’s,’ ‘mine,’ and ‘you two delinquent amateurs,’ may have featured. Possibly. I thought it was mild,” he added at Cosmo’s reproachful look.

“You being rude neither surprises nor worries me, Sam,” Cosmo replied cryptically.

“What the hell does that even mean,” Sam groused, rolling his eyes. He got up and made a beeline for his office. He nearly stopped in his tracks at the sight that was greeting him, but didn’t allow himself such a reaction.

Richard was studying the evidence board that Sam had used to track the progress of the case and his own thoughts on it over the past weeks. Sam mentally berated himself — this had been the very reason why he’d kept Richard out of his office before.

“I see you’ve found yourself,” he said caustically as he stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him, a clear Do Not Disturb sign for the kids.

“All of my life — my file — on a cork board,” Richard answered, almost absent-mindedly.

“Well, not all of your life. There’s things we don’t know.”

“Apart from my shoe size and what I had for breakfast for the last year, you mean.”

Sam suppressed the smile threatening to form at Kimble’s spirit slowly returning. “Something like that. C’mon, drug trials. Explain it to me.” As he went to sit behind his desk, he pushed a box full of medical journals out of sight with his foot. Each of those journals contained essays and papers written by Dr Richard Kimble.

 

*

**1998**

When it looked as though Sheridan had killed Noah, all thoughts of parallels between him and Richard flew out the window, right along with the code Sam had laboured to instill in each and every one of his deputies, replaced with deviation and revenge as the elevator doors shut between him and Cosmo’s furious expression.

Sam didn’t think of the doctor again until Royce was slumped into a hospital chair, bleeding to death. Perhaps Richard could have stitched Noah back together, if he’d been there, perhaps not. Probably not.


	3. Over Hill

**1993**

“Gerard!”

Sam cursed under his breath when the boss’s voice rang out across the office floor. It wasn’t often that the Director of the U.S. Marshal’s Office made his way downstairs, but when he did, it was usually Sam who was getting shouted at. He motioned for his team to proceed into the bullpen and get to work on the leads they had discussed on the way back.

“Yes, sir.”

Once they were in Sam’s office, with the door closed, Miller laid into him.

“How could you have let him go?”

“I didn’t let him go, sir, he got away.”

“When I’m looking at someone with your track record, Gerard, that is practically the same thing. You could’ve shot him in the leg! You should have!”

Sam met his superior’s infuriated gaze head-on. “Well, sir, I didn’t. He was unarmed, he made no move to attack me, my team, or anyone else, and I’m not in the habit of shooting unarmed people and risking serious injury. If I’d hit an artery, he’d be dead right now.”

“As it stands, Deputy Gerard, Richard Kimble is very much alive and still at large, to do as he pleases and endanger the public!”

“I disagree, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“He risked exposure to save a little boy’s life at Cook County, he saved a guard and at least one prisoner in the train wreck, and he could’ve shot me point blank. He didn’t. Until I find him, and I will, he’s no menace to anyone but himself.”*

Miller fumed at him from behind his glasses. “I know how much you pride yourself on your people-reading skills, Gerard, but if this goes South and word gets out, it’s on your head.”

“Yes, sir.”

**1998**

“So what exactly is the deal with you and fugitives?”

Sam looked up from the arrest reports he was reading, glancing over at Mark Roberts, who was more or less slumped into a chair across the table. More inconvenient memories had surfaced when Gerard had advised Walsh that they would have to keep Roberts around the office for a few days while the investigation was reopened.

Before Sam could respond, Cosmo chipped in from the other side of the desk in the bullpen. “He gets obsessed with them.”

“Cosmo!”

“What, it’s true. You get obsessed — well, you get obsessed with every damn case, but once you get it into your head that they’re actually innocent, it just gets worse.”

Sam made an exasperated noise at the back of his throat and moved as if to throw his pen at Cosmo, enjoying seeing the man duck reflexively even though no stationery was actually airborne. Roberts cleared his throat.

“You had an innocent before me?”

“Sure did,” Biggs cut in, walking towards his desk behind them. “Ever heard of Dr Richard Kimble?”

Roberts let out a soft snort. “Even if I should have, I was in deep cover at the time.”

Biggs shrugged. “Fair enough. Winter of 1993, man escapes prisoner transport. Turns out, man is Richard Kimble, lawfully convicted of having murdered his lawfully wedded wife in cold blood. Tried to talk his way out of it by claiming that a one-armed man was in his house the night of the murder. Chicago PD didn’t trust him as far as I can throw Sam after he’s eaten a packet of donuts, and bam, he got locked up and put on death row. Prisoner transport has an accident involving a train and he escapes. That’s where we come in.”

Roberts’ eyes went wide. “So you launched into a man hunt? Geez. And he really was innocent?”

“Sure was. None of us believed it — except for Big Dog, of course.”

“Hang on, hang on, I don’t do my job based on what I believe,” Gerard cut in, waving his hand impatiently to forestall the worst of the gossip.

Biggs made a placating gesture. “The evidence,” he emphasised the word with a pointed glance in Sam’s direction, earning a nod, “and Kimble’s quite frankly insane behaviour for a guilty guy who escaped the needle eventually led us to the conclusion that he was actually telling the truth about the events on the night in question. Turns out that his best friend, a fellow surgeon, had planned on killing him because he was in the way of a huge drug trial.”

“His best friend wanted him dead for money.” Roberts repeated to himself, then shook his head. “At least I just got screwed over by my employer.”

“And your country,” Cosmo added helpfully. Roberts waved it away.

“Nah, I already knew they were screwing everyone. So, you figure out this guy is innocent. What did you do?”

“We kept following the leads, and kept tabs on him. Went through everything we could find until, at the end, we had enough evidence to bring him in and make sure the case was reopened. Though, in his case, bringing him in and making sure he didn’t get himself killed was kinda the same thing,” Gerard answered the question before anyone else could cut in.

“You said he behaved like a nutjob.”

“He did. Sam was impressed.”

“I wasn’t _impressed_ , I was surprised.”

“You mean intrigued,” Cosmo piped up, not the least bit fearful of Sam’s withering stare.

“Hey, I was impressive!” Roberts protested.

“Not like Kimble. Sure, that jump off the roof and onto the train, not bad. But you’re government-trained, you knew what you were doing. Kimble was a rich surgeon from Chicago, and instead of shooting Sam and running like hell, he took a dive off a dam into a spillway in the freezing winter.”

Roberts did a double-take at Biggs. “He dove off a dam? That guy _is_ crazy.”

“Speaking of. Hey, Sam, did you really read all the articles Kimble wrote for those medical journals?”

Gerard tensed. “Some of them.”

“Only, it took you weeks to put them in evidence after hiding them from Richard in a box under your desk.”

Sam glared at Cosmo, who was obviously fighting a grin. Roberts looked to and fro between them.

“Is there a story here that I’m missing?”

“Kimble practically lived with us after we brought him in,” Cosmo talked over Sam’s warning look. “CPD wanted him back, Sam refused to hand him over, much like he’s refusing to release you from our custody now. Thing is, with you, it’s probably only going to take a few days since you spent a lot of time in hospital under armed guard and we could work in the meantime, but Kimble had to stay with us for almost two months. We had him booked in at a motel, also under armed guard, but he had to spend his days with us at the office, going over the evidence again and again to make sure we had a watertight case. Sam didn’t want him to know everything we’d been up to.”

“I didn’t want to freak him out.”

“Sure, because he had no idea how deeply we’d dug into his life.”

“Well, I know for a fact it’s not exactly pleasant to _see_ your entire existence spread out on a pinboard for everyone to cut a slice and dice, even if you know that’s what happened in theory,” Roberts cut in. Sam just gestured to show, ‘See? That’s what I meant.’

Cosmo just huffed.

Henry chose that moment to appear, thank goodness.

“Sam, the boss has been asking who’s going to take over Mr Roberts’ medical care now that we’re back in Chicago.”

Or maybe not.

Sam heaved a sigh. “Well, since she asked you and not me, I’m sure she’s already got someone in mind. Tell her I’ll take him to Memorial this afternoon.”

“Who’s at Memorial Hospital?” Roberts asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Dr Richard Kimble,” Sam replied warily, then went back to the arrest reports with an air of, ‘Talk to me and I’ll bite. Woof. Howl.’

**1993**

Sam didn’t put his own name on the roster for the armed guard outside Richard’s motel room. Seriously understaffed as they were at the moment, and seeing as how Sam only trusted those permanently on his team implicitly, everyone from the team was doing the odd shift along with other Marshals. Sam had nearly raised the topic with Cosmo, but one look at the man’s shrewd intelligence had steered him away from that particular conversation. It wouldn’t look too weird if he did take a shift or two, he knew. Sam Gerard was as paranoid as they came. But he’d also shown to be generous with delegation when he trusted his people; and Richard already saw enough of him at the office every day. Plus, they’d played cat and mouse for weeks.

So he stayed away from him.

**1998**

Sam presented his badge to the nurse at reception. “Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard. I have a patient here to see Dr Richard Kimble. Is he in?”

The nurse’s fingers fluttered over the keyboard of her computer for a few seconds before she nodded. “I’ll call upstairs to see if he’s available, Deputy.”

“Thank you.”

“Megs, it’s Riley. Is Dr Kimble out of surgery? ... Could you tell him there’s a patient here to see him? It’s urgent. … Thanks.”

She hung up and turned back to Gerard and Roberts. “If you’d like to wait over there, Dr Kimble will be right with you.”

“Thank you, Riley,” Sam smiled at her. Roberts pushed himself off the reception desk, ambling towards the chairs in the not too densely populated waiting area. Gerard followed, tucking his badge back into the breast pocket of his coat. Coming to stand beside the chair Roberts had lowered himself into, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest, he looked for all the world nonchalant.

*

With not much to go on besides, ‘it’s urgent,’ Richard made his way down in the lift. It was the middle of his shift at four in the afternoon and so far, everything had gone smoothly. He exited the lift and walked towards the waiting area in quick, but measured strides. If any limbs had been in danger of falling off, he’d have been paged. Focusing on Riley, he walked past the waiting area.

“Who’s looking for me?”

“There’s a Deputy Marshal Gerard there for you, Doctor,” Riley answered quietly, indicating someone behind him. Richard remained rooted to the spot, staring at her.

“Gerard?”

“That’s the name he gave me.”

Richard nodded. “Thank you, Riley.” When he hadn’t moved after a moment, Riley’s gaze searched his face.

“Is everything alright, Doctor Kimble?”

“Yes, of course. Everything’s fine,” Richard mumbled absently, looking down at his hands where they were lying on the desk. “Just fine.” He took a deep breath, then turned on his heel.

*

Of course Sam didn’t have to do a double-take the second he walked by to recognise him. He still did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * That line comes straight out of the original Fugitive Series from the 60s, actually.


	4. Kingdom Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Deputy Gerard,” the doctor greeted the marshal without much ceremony, nodding at him. Then, his gaze shifted to Sheridan. When they made eye contact, a small smile tugged at the corners of Kimble’s mouth, surprising Mark. Kimble held out his hand. “Dr Richard Kimble.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for.

**1993**

After saying goodnight to the marshal tasked with guarding his door that night, Kimble stumbled towards the bed and let himself fall face-first into the now vaguely familiar pillow. He’d spent the past six weeks holed up in here whenever he wasn’t at the marshals’ office with Gerard or one of his team. It was a short commute every day and, frankly, the walls were closing in. It was down to Gerard, his kids, as he affectionately called them, and the fact that his future was hanging in the balance that Richard hadn’t made a mad dash for the door at some point during the past few days, especially. They had moved to the part of the trial preparation that dealt with the exact specifics of Nichols using Sykes to frame Richard for the murder of his wife, and Kimble could only hide his grief and anger so well this far down the line. The team cut him some slack, especially Biggs and Newman, who volunteered to accompany him on short walks around the block when it all became too much, but they generally didn’t have the time for time-outs. Defence counsel was moving fast, trying to get as many pieces of evidence thrown out before the court case was even laid out, and Gerard and state prosecution fought tooth and nail to keep everything together.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen Sam being civil to prosecutors,” Cosmo remarked one day, addressing the team in general, but glancing at Richard from the side. “Your little cat and mouse game with Sam could have cost us a lot of evidence.”

“Why? I made a mess, you and… Sam chased after me and found the clues I left you, using them to track me down. Sure, I trespassed here and there, but I’m not law enforcement.” Gerard had told him to just call him by his name already a few days earlier, but Richard still had a little trouble with the concept after running from the marshal for so long and not even knowing any name.

Cosmo tilted his head in acknowledgement, but continued, “You may not be a leo, but as you said, you were still trespassing. Nichols’ attorney is trying to make it look like we’ve been working with you for longer than we’ve let on, that we offered you a deal somewhere between that bus crash and you coming back to Chicago, and that we’ve been letting you do our dirty work.”

Something resembling the kind of smirk he’d been capable of before all this flashed over Kimble’s face. “I did do your dirty work.”

“Yeah, well, we weren’t asking you to, smartass,” Gerard… Sam’s voice interrupted them as he came back out of his office to join them in the bullpen. He waved Renfro and Henry over, away from Richard, to talk to them about something in somewhat hushed tones.  It was rare that Richard was asked to leave the bullpen by now, usually when details of the prosecutor’s strategy were discussed that the deputies weren’t keen on him hearing — not so much for reasons of distrust as an odd sense of tact. Newman still glanced at Kimble a little apologetically when he or anyone from the team picked out a certain detail of Richard’s life and said something like, ‘Here, we can use this,’ use being the operative term. Richard’s life and limb were being molded into a court strategy, an iron-clad mandate to make sure that his best friend would spend the rest of his miserable life in prison, and it bemused him that the thought seemed to make even the most experienced among the marshals feel like they were constantly putting their feet in their mouths.

From his slightly slouched position in the chair, he watched the three talk. Cat and mouse game, yes. But at some point he and Gerard had started working together, some time down the road the marshal had started following his _hunches_ instead of leads. From what Richard understood of the man, Samuel Gerard was someone who could think himself into anyone’s head, could spend a few hours with a case file and a pinboard filled with virtual scraps of information that told him exactly where to run — but all of that ran on one premise: the person he was chasing to be guilty. Richard Kimble hadn’t murdered his wife — so at what point had Gerard stopped chasing a fugitive and started following the trail of Richard’s investigation? At the dam? Unlikely, he’d pointed the man’s own gun at him, as Gerard had readily reminded him when he’d called the marshal’s office from Sykes’ apartment. After he’d saved the little boy’s life at the hospital? Perhaps. Gerard must have followed the same train of thought as Richard, otherwise he’d have never turned up at the county jail, going up the same floors as Richard had to speak to the same inmate, otherwise he’d have never checked the hospital’s records for one-armed men. But had he accepted his testimony as the truth by that point? Again, unlikely. All Richard knew was that by the time Sam arrived at the conference, he knew that Richard _was_ innocent. That he believed him. That was good enough for him. The question that he couldn’t shake so easily, though, was when he started thinking that calling Gerard as soon as he got close enough to the truth would be a good idea.

And then, he was lying on the bed at the motel the marshals had him tucked away in like a dirty little secret, and he had no idea how long this was going to go on for. A couple of weeks? A couple of months? Heaven knew. Gerard had told him that the indictment hearing was coming up and that there was no way that Nichols wouldn’t remain in custody until the trial, but he couldn’t give him an exact date yet. If the court moved to indict, security around Richard would be relaxed enough for him to start getting his life back together, fraction by fraction, but nothing would be over until a grand jury had formally convicted Chuck. Until then, he was stuck in limbo — Richard gave a short, hollow laugh as he remembered that months ago, during that prison transfer, he’d also been stuck in limbo, waiting to live the rest of his life out on death row until the needle got him. All things considered, his circumstances had improved.

By now, he felt as if he knew most of the field agents the marshals office had to offer by name, so many had stood guard in front of his door throughout the last weeks. With some, he was on speaking terms as far as asking after their families and sharing a cup of coffee he made using the tiny kettle in his room at 7 in the morning before getting ready to “go to work,” as he euphemistically called it. With others, there were nods and goodbyes and not much else, but Richard made it a point to thank whoever had been on duty for another uneventful night. He wasn’t sure if anyone at the office thought Gerard a fool for putting up with him, especially when a discussion of the case ended in Richard and Gerard having a semi-public shouting match over how reckless he had been instead of trusting Sam to do his job.

“You said you didn’t care!” was usually Richard’s response to that particular (and very familiar) accusation, which usually prompted Gerard to just throw his arms up in a gesture of exasperation and exclaim, “I only meant I wasn’t trying to solve a damn puzzle all by myself!” before changing the subject.

Still, he felt as safe as he could possibly be where he was, because even if some of the marshals thought Gerard was paranoid, Richard knew well enough that the Chicago division didn’t doubt Gerard’s judgement. He pronounced Richard innocent, then Richard was innocent. Richard didn’t know whether witnessing such unconditional trust from subordinates in a law enforcement agency ought to disturb him, but since it was his ass on the line, he declined the opportunity to start a debate on base democracy in the workplace. Sometimes, when he woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, trying to calm his breathing and hoping he hadn’t made any kind of noise that would alert the marshal outside his door, he asked himself whether, had he been the one standing guard, Gerard would know. Whether he would badger Richard from outside until he was sure he was ok to go back to sleep, the same way he seemed to hound Richard whenever anything during the case preparation upset him too much. Whenever that happened, Richard would withdraw into himself, would sometimes close his eyes to block out at least some of the stimuli, block out the files spread open in front of him detailing the investigation into Helen’s death, the crime scene photos, the testimonies. Sometimes, if his last bathroom break had been a while ago, he’d excuse himself to go to the head, where he’d splash cold water into his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror until he was sure that he could go back.

Whenever Richard went quiet, or closed his eyes, but stayed in the bullpen, Sam would give him a minute before pulling him back — asking him a question or just saying his name until he acknowledged him. Whenever he left, he could be sure to find the deputy down the hallway leading back to the bullpen, arms crossed in front of his chest, leaning against the wall and waiting.

“Scared I’ll run again?” Richard had joked once, only once. The momentarily dark look on the other man’s face said it all, but he still replied.

“There’s no running from me anymore, Richard. Only from yourself.”

**1998**

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark Sheridan watched Gerard as he watched Kimble stride past them to the nurse who’d called him down. He didn’t have to be a trained government agent to know that the intent way in which the deputy marshal first did a double-take (a lapse which seemed uncharacteristic for such a controlled personality) and then followed Kimble’s movement as he walked was the kind of scrutiny you gave someone you wanted to make sure was ok because you knew exactly there’d been something wrong with them before. Gerard’s gaze lingered on Kimble’s legs, especially his knees as far as Mark could tell, then on his hip, before taking in the whole of the man once again before looking away as soon as Kimble’s movements indicated he was turning around to face them. The doctor’s body language made it more than clear that this was unexpected and more than a little startling, but by the time he had reached Gerard, the anxiety on his face had given way to something more familiar.

“Deputy Gerard,” the doctor greeted the marshal without much ceremony, nodding at him. Then, his gaze shifted to Sheridan. When they made eye contact, a small smile tugged at the corners of Kimble’s mouth, surprising Mark. Kimble held out his hand. “Dr Richard Kimble.”

Mark shook the man’s hand. “Mark Sheridan.”

“For what it’s worth, Mr Sheridan, it’s nice to meet you.” Kimble paused before continuing, “So you’re the new innocent fugitive, huh.”

He nodded. “I am, doctor. I’ve heard a lot about you. Why didn’t you write a book, could have taken some cues from you.”

Next to them, Gerard snorted. “You two done swapping stories about running from the law?”

“Hey, I’ve got questions.”

“Well, so do I. Question 1, what kind of medical care will you be needing during the next few weeks, and question 2, can the good doctor here provide it.” With that, he turned back to Kimble and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Kimble nodded, the tiny smile still there.

“Come on, let’s get you into an exam room.” He moved back down the hall, calling to Riley as he went. “Riley, I’m taking Deputy Gerard and the patient into exam room 2. I’ll call if I need anything.”

*

He showed them into a room halfway down the corridor, going right ahead instead of holding the door for them, Sam noted with amusement as he exercised his usual habit of taking another look over his shoulder down the hall before closing the door behind them. Kimble had seen him do that often enough to realise, but Sam hadn’t expected it to stick.

Sheridan moved to the exam table, Kimble accepting the folder containing the documentation of his treatment from him. Sam parked himself leaning against the wall behind Sheridan, watching as Richard shifted into the kind of doctor mode he had observed once before, when he’d taken care of Cosmo at the hotel.

“I see you’ve had extensive surgery over a short period of time. How’s the residual pain on a good day, on a scale from 1 to U.S. Marshals?”

Sam smiled at the jab, while Sheridan snorted a tired laugh. “I’ve had worse. 2 and a half on a good day, 3 and a half after a bad night.”

Kimble frowned. “Define bad night,” he requested while he carefully prodded the area around the slowly healing bullet wound.

“Trouble sleeping, the odd bad dream.”

“Night terrors?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Ok. If you’re having trouble sleeping, that’s probably more to do with the combined physical and emotional stress you’ve been through. The more rest you get,” Kimble added with a deliberately unsubtle glance at Sam, “and the more help, the sooner you should be feeling better. Have you spoken to Deputy Kramer? If she’s still with the department, that is?” Again a sidenote for Sam.

Sheridan nodded. “Yeah, she is, I’ve spoken to her.”

“Good. She helped me a lot when I was in protective custody before the hearing. If your sleeping problems persist and you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, she’s your best bet for help.”

“Hey, I help,” Sam said from the corner, sounding somewhat indignant.

Kimble leaned past his patient to look at him. “I was talking about professional help, deputy.”

“Oh, I’m very professional.”

Richard raised a brow, but refrained from commenting. “Now, about your arm. Have you started physiotherapy yet to work on your mobility?”

“No, not yet. The docs who operated on me said to wait a little longer, the whole shoulder was pretty smashed.”

“Now _that_ was my fault,” Sam chipped in from his spot behind Sheridan. This time, Richard didn’t react, leaving him feeling a little put out.

“We’ll get a referral from ortho for your shoulder. For now, try squeezing my hands.” Sheridan took Kimble’s hand and squeezed, tight as he could, hissing a little at the pain that zipped through his arm. “Ok, not bad. Pressure’s palpably stronger in your left arm than your right, but I bet this is already an improvement compared to what you could do a few days ago.”

“Moving around does get easier. Though I’m not doing much moving, anyway, being stuck at the marshals’ office.”

“Have they astounded you with their hospitality yet?”

“It’s not so bad, beats jumping on top of trains and getting shot at.”

Kimble hummed in agreement before continuing the exam.

*

Once he had finished taking a good look at Sheridan, Kimble and Gerard accompanied him down to radiology for another shoulder x-ray. After handing him over to Peter, they waited outside. “Thanks for doing this, Richard.”

“Of course. I’ll pull together a team to work with him as time goes on.”

Sam frowned a little. “I was hoping we could keep it down to as few people as possible.”

“I know, Sam, but I’m a vascular surgeon, not a bone breaker.”

Against his will, Sam made a face. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”

Kimble smiled. “Afraid so.”

“Well, ok. If you trust those doctors, we’ll make do.”

“It won’t be for long, anyway. What’s going to take the longest is the physical therapy for his arm.”

Sam nodded. “It’ll be ok.” He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “It’ll be ok.”

Richard gave him a look. “How are you doing?”

Sam returned the look, taken aback. “Me? How should I be doing?”

“I heard about Newman. I’m very sorry.”

Sam lowered his eyes, sighing. “Thank you. He was a good kid.”

“When you went off after Sheridan… you thought...”

“Yeah, I did.”

Richard didn’t know what to say, so he thought he should let it go.

“That’s when he stopped reminding me of you.”

“What?”

“He didn’t do anything as crazy as dive off a dam, but he did shoot my vest instead of me, and he went out of his way not to harm anyone while he fled. But then I thought he’d finally snapped and killed one of my kids, and I… I started having doubts at some point, you know, when things didn’t add up again, and Royce, that stinking weasel, started butting in. Those doubts flew right out the window that day.” Sam stopped short. “How did you hear?”

“It was on the news that night. They did mention his name by that point, I didn’t get home until early in the morning.”

“You get home after a graveyard shift and the first thing you do is watch the news?”

"As soon as I heard you had another fugitive... well, I kept watching the news at all hours."

"Wanted to watch me hunt down another innocent man? Prove me wrong one more time?"

Richard wasn't cowed, though Sam could tell he wasn’t sure if he should really say out loud what he had on the tip of his tongue. "Someone has to keep an eye on you."


	5. Serves You Right to Suffer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mark learns the rest of the story according to Cosmo, and Sam and Richard are keeping secrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh... it's been over two years, and I wouldn't fault anyone here for chasing me through town with torches and pitchforks.
> 
> Here's my offering to the gods, however, I hope you like it.

Before Sam could respond – to laugh, to scowl, to remind him he could look after himself, Richard didn’t know – Richard’s pager beeped.

He shot Sam an apologetic look and pointed at the phone mounted on the wall just to his left. “I’ll just be a moment.”

Sam didn’t speak, just nodded, probably glad for the interruption. He had never taken kindly to Richard worrying about him back when his arm was in a sling. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same, Richard thought to himself; then told himself to get his head back in the game. He answered the page and listened intently as one of the nurses informed him of one of his patients’ condition deteriorating unexpectedly. Just a change in blood pressure and oxygen levels for now, but if the trend continued in decline, they might have to consider opening the man back up. Upon hanging up, Richard cursed internally, knowing he had been right to keep the patient in the ICU for a day longer. Sometimes, he hated being right. They were taking him for a scan now, he was expected upstairs in five minutes.

He turned and regarded Sam for a moment, who stood leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, observing the flow of people past and around them. The busy corridor of a hospital had to be like a playground for natural watchers like him, even if to a seasoned US Marshal, the routine interactions between hospital staff, social workers, and even police officers in a city like Chicago must seem mundane.

Taking a breath, Richard crossed the hall, Sam’s gaze zeroing in on him as soon as he registered the movement.

“I have to go, a patient of mine…,” Richard trailed off, knowing Sam would get the gist without having to continue.

“Of course.“

“I’ll ask Pete to keep me in the loop on Mark, and we’ll put together a team to work with him. The hospital will contact your office with the necessary details.”

“Thanks, Richard. I appreciate it.”

“Happy to help.” Richard stood for a moment, not knowing how this was supposed to work. “I’ll, uh… I’ll talk to you soon, then? I’m assuming you and your team are in Chicago until the trial?”

Sam nodded. “We are.”

“Good,” Richard nodded decisively, and if Sam was surprised at the emphatic response, he didn’t show it. That subject dealt with, he dithered again. He didn’t shake Sam’s hand before, should he do so now?

Sam took the decision off his hands, to coin a phrase, and stuck out his own. “Later, Richard.”

Richard smiled, having half-forgotten Sam’s unique way of dealing with awkward situations. “Later, Sam.” They shook on it, and then he turned to leave. He was half-way down the hall towards the elevator, when he heard Sam call out his name. Surprised, he turned, feeling the adrenaline surge, as if by ingrained instinct, the question what was wrong already forming on his lips.

“Would you… would you come to the funeral?” Sam asked when he was close enough to hear without Sam having to raise his voice. Richard damn near stopped in his tracks.

“The—Newman’s funeral?” Richard asked, completely blindsided.

“Yeah.” Sam’s face was as closed off as he’d ever seen it, his dark eyes giving nothing away. “He liked you,” was all he did offer eventually, with a shrug.

Richard just looked at him for a long moment, trying to make sense of Sam’s motives, and then just giving up. “Are you sure? If… if it’s not…”

“It’ll mostly be marshals,” Sam confirmed his hunch, “but friends and family, too. Just stick close to us, and you’ll be fine.”

Richard wished this were the sort of thing where one could ask for time to think it over, but asking for time to wonder whether he should attend the funeral of one of the federal agents who had saved his life and proven his innocence was not it. So he nodded and swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I’ll be there, then.”

Sam’s expression shifted, and although it was barely there and although it had been years, something at the back of Richard’s mind told him to take it that Sam was pleased.

“I’ll pick you up? It’s this Friday, at 1pm. Do you—do you need a trade a shift?”

“No, I’m free. Alright. Same address.”

“I’ll be there at 12:30.”

Richard couldn’t stop the huff of laughter that that startled out of him. Sam eyed him.

“What, doctor?”

He shrugged, gestured vaguely. “You remember. Of course, you remember.”

“It’s a habit,” Sam replied, then looked dangerously close to wincing as he realised what that sounded like. “I didn’t mean--”

Richard waved it aside. “I know what you meant.” He looked at his watch, he had about 45 seconds left. “I really need to go. I’ll see you on Friday.”

“Friday,” Sam confirmed. Richard turned towards the elevators, and left without another look over his shoulder. Somehow, it felt as though Sam might not be there anymore if he did, like a ghost. He couldn’t decide whether he _preferred_ him to be real.

It was going to be a long week.

 

* * *

 

 

“So how is he?” was the first thing out of Cosmo’s big mouth when Gerard and Sheridan returned to the bullpen a couple hours later. Of course, no-one wanted to hear about the team of physio therapists and surgeons assembled to help their patient regain full mobility in his arm and shoulder. They just wanted the gossip.

But two could play at that game. “A few months of physical therapy and he’ll be right as rain, won’t you, Mark?” Sam asked Sheridan over his shoulder, who didn’t even have the decency to look confused.

“That’s right, chief,” came the insolent reply, and Gerard narrowed his eyes at him. Overselling it wasn’t helping. He knew that, of course.

“Sam,” came Cosmo’s warning tone, which somehow also managed to put up a cajoling front. It had been honed over the course of over a decade, designed to drag even the most reluctant morsels of information out of him simply because Cosmo thought that that’s what friends _did_.

Gerard sighed. “He’s working, he helped put together a team of doctors for Mark to see to get better. Happy now?”

“Ain’t my happiness that’s on the line here, Sammy,” Cosmo had the gall to shrug, not even looking up from the report he was poring over.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aw, hell. He _knew_ he should never ask Cosmo what anything meant. It was bad for his health.

“What that means, Sammy, is that you need a friend.”

“I have friends. Well, maybe one fewer after I kill you and hide the body,” Sam shot back.

Cosmo didn’t take the bait. “Did you invite him to—for Friday?”

Sam did stop in his tracks at that. Instead of answering, however, he marched past Cosmo, into his office, and closed the door.

 

* * *

 

 

Left trailing in his wake, Mark wandered over to Cosmo’s desk and sat in an empty visitor’s chair. “So… you wanna tell me the whole story?”

At this point, Deputy Renfro finally put down his pen, and favoured Mark with a squinty sort of look. “Why you asking?”

“I met the good doctor you’ve all been making so much noise about today, and I didn’t really get it before, but I do now.”

“Get what?”

Of course, for all his open teasing, Renfro _would_ be protective of Gerard.

“That there’s history there, history that neither of them's gonna acknowledge for, apparently, reasons. So, tell me. What’s the score?”

Renfro leaned back in his desk chair, tapping the documents on the table with his pencil, giving Mark a stern look. “I’m not tellin’ you because I enjoy the gossip.”

Mark shrugged. “I was never one for water cooler talk,” he replied pleasantly. “But I’ve got nothing better to do, and to me, a keep-out sign is practically an invitation,” he jerked his chin at Gerard’s closed office door and the man himself sitting at his desk, clearly dividing his time evenly between shuffling papers around and brooding.

The deputy smirked. “Alright. But not a word to Sammy,” he warned, and Mark raised his good arm in surrender. “Ok. Well. You know most of the story: Kimble stayed with us for nigh on two months while we were prepping the case for the DA. About six weeks in, we all think things have settled down, Sam and Richard have stopped yelling at each other every time the dam or the boy at the hospital or the chase at county lockup comes up. But then, Nichols is indicted, as predicted, and security around Richard relaxes. The courts give him back at least a handful of his civil rights, and Richard can start looking for a place to live. That’s when things get ugly.”

Mark frowned. “Ugly, how?”

Renfro tilted his head. “Because it finally occurred to Sam that Richard would actually be leaving; and good riddance, too.”

 

* * *

 

 

**1993**

Sam didn’t question his job very often. Usually, when he was denied a warrant or a wiretap for lack of probable cause other than his gut, the implications of which he steadfastly pushed aside. That day, however, he wondered whether there had been fine print in his contract that demanded that he become a herder-cum-wrangler of cats on top of a law enforcement agent.

The morning of Charles Nichols’ indictment hearing was a mess. The kids were scrambling for last-minute details and practically constantly on the phone with the prosecutor, and Richard… Richard was the most nervously useless he’d ever seen him; and it was bothering Sam more than it should, more than he cared to admit. Somewhere along the way, he had turned into Richard’s protector rather than his pursuer, and never had he felt the distinction more keenly than now, when he could do absolutely nothing to actually help him. He had spent days reassuring Richard, without using as many words, that Nichols wouldn’t see the light of day as long as he lived, and that Richard’s conviction would be overturned within the month after Nichols was put away for good.

Richard just nodded and waved him off, muttering, “I know, Sam, I know,” and going in search of a cup of coffee, or the head, or a plate of donuts he could shut Sam up with. (That was a tactic Sam hadn’t thought he’d stoop to, much less pick up on from the kids.)

The thing was, Sam knew he was in trouble. He’d been in trouble the moment he’d started referring to Kimble as ‘Richard’ in his head, and even before that, the moment Richard’s disappointment at his indifference had seemed more important even than his mad dive into the spillway. Things just didn’t add up, and by the time they actually found him, Sam had been almost fond of that ridiculous doctor and his utterly reckless ideas. He never should have let himself get that far.

But here he was, watching Richard fidget through the glass windows of his office, knowing full well none of this would end well. He’d just have to make sure Richard wouldn’t catch on.

A knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts. Looking up, he saw Richard on the other side of the glass. Waving him in, Sam sat up straighter in his chair, not wanting to give the impression that he was sulking.

“What is it, Richard?”

“Sam,” Kimble started before sitting down. Again, he fidgeted for a moment before coming right to the point. “After Chuck is indicted, I want to start looking for an apartment.”

Sam nodded, keeping his face blank. “That’s the plan.”

“And I want… I would like to get to court under my own steam. I know that the marshal’s office needs to keep an eye on me until I’m formally acquitted, but I don’t… I’m tired of being babysat. I’ll check in every day if you want me to, and I won’t leave the city, let alone the state, but I need to start looking into getting my medical licence back, and I can’t… I can’t do that with marshals looming over my shoulder.”

It was like an ice-cold bath and a punch to the gut at the same time. Knowing that Richard probably wanted to get away from them was, apparently, not the same as actually hearing him say it. Torn between wanting to fight him on it and just giving in to get it over with, Sam was quiet for a minute.

“Sam?” Richard prompted.

“You’re right. You need to get back on your feet, and this is as good a time as any.” Sam let his eyes flicker to Richard’s face briefly before letting himself get distracted by Biggs trying to get his attention from the bullpen. He held up his index finger to signal him to wait until Sam was done. “Have Cosmo set you up with his cousin, she works at a realtor’s office. They can help you find something quickly. The state will pay your rent until your assets are unfrozen.”

Richard’s eyes were wide – he probably had expected Sam to fight him on this. “I… thank you, Sam. Do you think I could—”

“Sorry, Richard, Biggs is trying to sign the details of an entire file through the windows, and he’s a terrible mime,” Sam interrupted him. “Come on, let’s see what he wants.”

“Oh. Sure.”

As he walked out of his office in front of Richard, Sam took a deep breath. It was going to be a long week.

 

* * *

 

 

**1998**

“So Kimble starts looking for a place to live that isn’t an ugly-ass motel, and Gerard…” Mark trailed off, prompting Renfro to continue.

“And Sammy here decides that he needs to stay away from him, much as that’s possible in this office and a courtroom. Thought we wouldn’t notice, either, but we did. I don’t think Richard realised until it stopped, but Sam was practically glued to his side for weeks, and they got along, too. But once Nichols was indicted, we didn’t have to keep Richard with us all hours of the day anymore, and the man wasn’t stupid. Got away from us soon as he could.”

“Gerard, what’d he do?”

Renfro shrugged. “Moping, and trying badly to hide it.”

 

* * *

 

 

**1993**

This was not the first day Richard Kimble exited a courtroom. It wasn’t even the first time he didn’t leave it in handcuffs; but it was the first time he left it a free man.

A grand jury had just pronounced Chuck guilty, and in sum judgement, the court had decreed Richard innocent of the murder of his wife, his conviction overturned. Sitting in a daze, Richard had felt hands clap his shoulders, Henry and Biggs probably, and it was Poole who had urged him up from the bench and gently steered him out of the room. Together, the marshals had shielded him from the clamouring reporters yet again, and bundled him into one of their SUVs that, like a clown car, they somehow all fit into. Sam was driving, Cosmo next to him in the passenger seat. Cosmo turned, grinning at him.

“So, doctor. How’s it feel?”

Truth be told, Richard wasn’t sure whether he just felt too much, or not much of anything. Reasonably sure he managed a crooked smile, he replied, “Pretty good.”

His civil liberties returned to him, he could now… well, what could he do? Anything he damn well pleased, he supposed, and that thought was altogether too big for his head. True, he had never stopped fighting, had never given up, but there’d been a time, in between being convicted and being transferred, in between having his life torn away from him and that fateful train crash, that he had made his peace with it. With dying, at least, not with never knowing who had done this to him, or who was responsible. His lawyer had promised that there would be appeals, that they would keep looking, but his words had echoed in Richard’s ears: “They can’t find the guy.”

So it had fallen to Richard to find him, and he had. And now, he could begin anew.

With his and Helen’s combined assets, he could live comfortably, if he wanted to; Richard knew this. He had considered and discarded the possibility, knowing that he may have lived a privileged and sheltered life, but he’d never be content just sitting around. He was a surgeon, always would be, and if this experience had taught him anything, it was that helping people, as trite as it sounded, was more important now than ever. Whatever form this would take, the first step had to be to get his licence back. The paperwork was already in place.

Lost in thought, Richard hadn’t noticed they were already back at the Marshals’ Office. Looking up at the tall building in the heart of the city, he suddenly realised that this was it. His last time in, and first time out with his freedom restored to him. His eyes sought Sam, walking ahead of them.

The marshal had been distant the past few days, seemed preoccupied. Richard had nosed around whether, so close to the end of his case, there was trouble already looming on the horizon, but Cosmo had denied any knowledge of an upcoming case.

“The usual,” he’d said. “Ferrying witnesses across the country, keeping up with informants, helping out the Feds, that sort of thing.”

So it was probably just Sam being Sam, Richard reasoned, puzzling through something on his own and unwilling to share; if it had to do with work at all. Even after working so closely with him and his team for nearly two months, Richard was aware that he knew next to nothing about the man. He knew about everyone else’s families, about Newman’s dates and Henry’s kids, knew about Biggs’ wife’s promotion at her job the day it’d happened. But Gerard… he didn’t share, and demanded even less (if it wasn’t pertinent to the case). Anything Richard did know, Sam had told him while driving somewhere to speak with a witness, or the DA; and it never seemed like much. It wasn’t until Cosmo piped up from the backseat that Sam had never told _him_ that story about the time he’d nearly put his car in the river chasing down a suspect during a blizzard that Richard thought that maybe, Samuel Gerard wasn’t such a mystery after all.

But then, reality in the form of Chuck’s indictment hearing had come crashing in and Richard had more pressing matters to think about.

Standing in the bullpen now, Richard wrinkled his forehead in confusion. He was free, he was… alone, he realised. He was free, yes, but Helen was still dead. There was no-one to come home to after this, no-one waiting. He had saved himself and had solved her murder, but there had been no saving Helen. The nightmare had ended. Just not for her.

And his time here, too, had come to an end.

Which was what he wanted. Lying awake at night, at the motel, he’d wanted nothing more than to be shut of the constant supervision, the constant invasion of his life and privacy.

So why was he feeling… sad?

A noise caught his attention, and when he looked up, he realised it was Sam, plucking printouts and photos off the board in his office, and chucking them into a cardboard evidence box at his feet.

Richard’s file – Richard’s life, disappearing into a box. He’d been free for what, all of five minutes?

Irrational anger began to mount in Richard’s chest, and he waded across the bullpen and through the open door of Gerard’s office.

“That was fast,” he said, voice a lot rougher and sounding a lot more accusing than he’d meant to, but he found it actually matched his mood rather well.

Sam didn’t spare him a glance. “Yeah, well. It’s done.”

He didn’t know why, but the sight of Sam stuffing the morsels of Richard’s torn-apart life into a box like unwanted memories, like _scrap_ made him angry. And with everything that’d happened to him, anger had been a driving force behind a lot of what he’d done while on the run, and even after, but he was _furious_ , and he couldn’t stop himself.

“Stop,” he demanded, admittedly sounding bolder than he felt.

Gerard turned his dark gaze on him. “Excuse me?”

Richard refused to squirm under the scrutiny. “At least wait until I’m gone before you throw that out.”

If he’d expected to be asked why (which he didn’t have a particularly good answer for), he was disappointed. Sam didn’t ask him anything, just snagged another document from the board without even taking out the pin that secured it.

“Then I suggest you get going,” Sam responded bluntly. Scowling, Richard tried to make sense of all this. If he didn’t know better, Sam seemed to be fuelled by irrational anger of his own, but that didn’t add up at all. What did Sam have to be angry at? He’d done his job, he’d closed the case. That’s what Richard was. Just another case.

And yet, he was still standing here. Many things had been said and written about Richard Kimble over the course of two years, but think of him what you will: he knew when to take a hint.

“I guess I should. Goodbye, deputy.” Without another word, Richard turned and left the office, closing the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

**1998**

“That was it? He just left? What did Gerard say to him?”

Renfro made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Sam never told me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Kimble. We were dealing with our own paperwork one minute, then Richard was going round the bullpen saying goodbye the next.”

“And you never saw him again?”

“Well, _we_ did. He invited us for drinks down the pub after he got his approbation back, invitation extended to everyone involved with his case. Sam made up some bullshit excuse and didn’t come.”

“Hmm,” Mark hummed, trying to reconcile that information with the interaction he’d witnessed today. “You think they’ve been in contact since?”

“Don’t know. Not for lack of trying to find out, mind you. We gave up at some point.”

“So… nothing actually happened between them?”

Renfro shook his head decisively. “No, Sam, never would’ve let it. And besides, Richard was still having nightmares about his dead wife. No, nothing happened. But if you ask me… it’s high time _something_ did.”


	6. Not In That Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day of Newman's funeral, there's an elephant in the room. Car. Whatever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah so this is it! The final chapter. A huge thank-you to everyone who came along for the ride, and if you want more of Gerard and Kimble being idiots, there's still my other fic, Do You Believe Me?, which will run for 2 more chapters.
> 
> If you've any interest in yelling at me, I'm screwtheprinceimtakingthehorse on tumblr and @andreamareike on twitter.
> 
> xo, Andrea

Standing in front of the mirror and tying his black tie, Richard did his best not to count the parallels. Between now, and the last time he had cause to attend a funeral – or would have, if they’d let him. When Helen was buried, he’d already been indicted, and her parents had made sure that no judge would grant him leave to be there; citing increased flight risk with so many others who had the means to help him escape in attendance.

The first time he had seen his wife’s grave had been after his arrest at the hands of the marshals, during the two months he had spent in their custody. He hadn’t dared to visit Helen while he was on the run – the graveyard was too close to their old neighbourhood and the risk of discovery too great; not to mention that the police had certainly expected him to show up there. Sam had given him a ride that day, had accompanied him as far as the plot, as was his duty, but hung back far enough so as not to intrude on Richard’s privacy.

Letting his hands drop to his sides, Richard sighed. That had been five years ago, and his conviction was nearing its sixth “anniversary.” He’d gone every year since being acquitted, for her birthday, their wedding anniversary, _his_ birthday… and for the day she’d died, too, leaving him brittle and filled with anger that he thought to have passed and that he wasn’t entirely sure where it came from. Chuck was behind bars, sentenced to the same fate as Richard had been, and he wouldn’t escape the needle. Richard’s own views on the death penalty were… murkier now than they had been once upon a time, but he felt that whether Chuck rotted in prison for the rest of his life or whether he suffered the injections he had had no qualms condemning his best friend to, didn’t rightly matter. Chuck would die, one way or another, and Richard knew hearing of his passing would give him no true satisfaction, anyway.

Over the years, Richard had met more men and women like him – people who had lost their spouses to violence or horrific accidents. He’d been reluctant to join the support groups at first, not because of any delusions of masculinity but because he’d been afraid they might recognise him. But then he’d found a small church group near his new apartment, and the reverend had been so welcoming that Richard had taken the leap. He still went, being one of the oldest members of the group now, and although his grief had calmed, it had taken him a long time to realise that he was allowed to be happy, as trite as that sounded. Not every smile, not all laughter and joy required tribute to some vengeful god – Helen would have been the last to demand such foolishness.

Truth be told, smiles and laughter had been few and far between after the trial. After leaving the marshals’ custody. Without the motley group buzzing around him every hour of the day, returning to the quiet life, as one might call it if one had a very morbid sense of humour, had been strange; and it had truly hit him then that there was no returning to the life he’d known before. When the prisoner transport had crashed and Richard had seen his chance to run, he’d known no other reason to keep himself alive beyond finding Helen’s murderer and proving his own innocence. He’d had no objective such as ‘getting his life back,’ or ‘returning to normal,’ because there’d been no normal. Helen was gone. A few years ago, he’d read about a man who’d been framed for murdering his friend’s family, who had spent years in maximum security prison, sentenced to a life behind bars, who, when a lawyer approached him about reopening his case, had sent her away.

Richard had, then, wondered whether, if the train hadn’t derailed that night, he would have done the same seven years into his sentence – provided they’d have let him live that long.

 

*

 

At 12.30 on the dot, his doorbell rang. Not even bothering with the buzzer, he just pressed the intercom button. “I’ll be right down, Sam.” He grabbed his coat and his keys, and then he was out the door.

He hadn’t really thought about it before, but seeing Gerard wear a suit – and not just jeans and a jacket, or that damned sweater vest – was nothing short of a cosmic imbalance. That it was for the burial of a colleague (a protégé, a friend) choked the quip before it could reach his lips.

“Hi, Sam. Thanks for picking me up,” Richard said instead when he opened the door.

Sam’s eyes brushed him before trailing the height of the building Richard lived in. “Still here, huh?”

Richard had moved here right after his acquittal, Cosmo’s cousin indeed helping him with apartment hunting. She’d made no fuss about stepping in to go looking at places that matched his requirements while he was still technically a convicted felon. She’d protected his identity, and when the conviction had been stricken from his record, she’d put him in touch with the owners of the places she’d pre-approved for him. Richard supposed that everyone had expected him to buy a condo after a while, to stop renting the apartment and go back to the way of life he’d been used to, but the thought hadn’t appealed. Instead, he’d stayed – it was a good neighbourhood, and it wasn’t as though the place was small. For one person living alone, it was on the bigger side, and he hadn’t exactly brought a lot of furniture with him. A few of the things he and Helen owned had been put in storage by her family, and he’d bartered for a handful of pieces not yet sold or thrown out. They had been gracious enough to let him have them. They hadn’t, say, invited him in for tea, but they’d slowly come around to the notion that he really hadn’t murdered Helen. That they’d been so ready to believe it when Richard had _known_ good people who didn’t – his friends and colleagues, some of Helen’s friends – hadn’t really given him incentive to convince them further. Sometimes during his time in prison, he’d wished his parents were still alive. But then, it was better that they weren’t, and that what distant family he had hadn’t been called to testify on his behalf, seeing as they exchanged Christmas cards and not much else. And so, he hadn’t moved, had even made a few friends among the other tenants, and made sure to check in on Mrs Zabini, the supervisor, and her husband every now and again.

“Yeah,” Richard murmured. “Still here.”

They didn’t speak much on the drive and the radio was off, but still, somehow, the silence wasn’t as oppressive as Richard had thought it might. The giant elephant in the room – or car, as it were – was, of course, that they hadn’t actually spoken to each other since Richard had left the marshals. He’d gone out for drinks with the team when he’d been certified by the medical board, but Sam hadn’t come. He’d kept in touch, loosely, with Cosmo, who had taken it upon himself to keep him apprised of the worst of the shenanigans they got up to. It was through him, too, that Richard knew that Sam had personally overseen Chuck’s transfer to maximum security about six months after his judgement. That, more than the stories about how Sam acted like an old dog being taught new tricks, had mellowed Richard’s anger after their last encounter – which, for some reason, had a way of lasting that Richard had not anticipated. Being furious with Sam after the fact had made no sense, so Richard had resigned himself to something altogether different being the cause: being thrown out, his file along with the box of journals Sam had thought he could hide from him. Sam had believed him, had rained hell down on the CPD in going after Richard and in giving evidence against Chuck in court so resolutely that he… well. Richard had thought he’d made a friend.

He’d felt safe with Sam. Being tossed out into the real world had been a very abrupt eye-opener.

It was only now, five years later and again stuck in a car with him that Richard looked at Sam, really looked, and saw the same man who’d once trailed him to the restroom to make sure he didn’t slide into dark thoughts, the same man who’d made sure he was as safe as can be while waiting for his best friend to be convicted of his crimes. Sam _had_ been his friend.

Which was why he’d made it so easy for Richard to leave. It had taken a long time for Richard to understand why he’d been so angry; but the answer had been simple. He’d wanted his life to be his own, he’d wanted to be free. But somehow, he hadn’t wanted leaving Sam behind to be part of that bargain, and he hadn’t understood why it had to be.

Today, he knew. If Sam hadn’t, their relationship never would have changed, and Richard never would have had a chance at fitting himself back together – and finding out _who_ he was. Prison stripped away everything you owned, everything you had, and everything you _were_. It put you in an identical jumpsuit and shackles, and then it left you to rot, to die, or both. During the hunt, the only thing on his mind had been to prove his innocence, but he’d had no concept of what to _do_ with it once he had. His future had looked more like a human-shaped void than an actual life. But then he’d held it in his hands, and he did what he’d been getting pretty good at: run like hell.

 

*

 

The funeral was quiet, for all that it was a large gathering. Law enforcement officers and officials, family members – ex-girlfriends, Biggs remarked with a broken laugh that wrenched a smile out of everyone, even Sam. Richard had been slotted into their ranks like he belonged there, flanked by Cosmo and Henry, who stood to Sam’s left, Cooper, Poole and Biggs on his right. Mark had opted not to attend, although not on their account, as Poole told him when he asked; and he could understand the man’s reasoning. There was too much press around even for Richard to be comfortable, even though his time in the spotlight was long over. The journalists were being kept away and outside the gates by officers of the CPD, but Mark’s presence would have likely tipped coverage into more of a frenzy than it already was, what with Newman having died not just in the line of duty, but in uncovering an intelligence conspiracy of frightening proportions.

Throughout the service, Richard found himself looking over at Sam, wishing more than once that he could reach out and touch his arm, or pitch his voice low and murmur something distracting into his ear, anything – any of the things he remembered Sam doing when he had been overwhelmed whilst preparing for the trial. Having all these memories brought to light now, by this, set shame burning low in Richard’s chest. For storming out, for leaving the way he had, and for never letting him know he was grateful.

Sam’s face was like a perfect storm – standing completely still if you just got close enough. His eyes dark and his expression blank, Richard could only hope to guess what was going on inside his head.

 

*

 

 Asking Richard to come to the funeral had been a decision Sam hadn’t actually made until the last second, although he guessed it should tell him something that Cosmo had anticipated it. He was fairly certain that, if they hadn’t been thrown together by this case, Sam would have considered contacting him and then wouldn’t have done it – after all, who did that? Who set you loose upon the world, then left you to your own devices for five years, and then asked for your support at a funeral for someone else you’d barely known; albeit without ever actually asking for any of that support he knew Richard would be capable of, and would be willing to lend.

In summary, Sam didn’t like that it made him feel better that Richard was here, he didn’t like that he needed him to be. He didn’t like that he’d asked him in the first place, and that he couldn’t fathom why Richard had agreed. Worse, he thought, if it was pity. He didn’t deserve any of that.

He’d failed. He had failed Newman, and Mark, too. He’d failed to see Royce for the dirty weasel that he was, and two innocent people had paid the price.

Sam watched as Newman’s coffin was lowered into the ground. He’d deserved better.

 

*

 

With Newman’s family proceeding towards his parents’ house for the wake, the marshals went their own way. Piling into the pub with them, Richard tried to shake the reminders of the last time he’d shared a ride with the team, but all he got was a fistful of memories of Newman, beaming at him. Richard had felt a peculiar sense of joy that day (or perhaps it hadn’t been joy at all and his memories were _wrong_ , seeing as everybody had told him, after, that what he’d felt _must_ have been joy), but that past was distant now, both for time and for the changes in between.

The pub was the marshals’ usual haunt, and no-one batted an eye at the crowd of deputies and officers raising pints and shot glasses well before 5pm. Anyone rarely ever did, Richard had observed in his time with them, and whatever his thoughts on that, he was glad for it now. He was on call, so couldn’t drink, but Henry had grinned crookedly and put down a glass of milk in front of him, and Richard laughed.

“Someone has to,” Henry said, and he could only nod.

Some got drunk, others stayed just barely sober enough to get everyone home, and Sam just _sat_ opposite him, staring at his scotch more than he was drinking it. Richard hadn’t attempted much conversation throughout the afternoon, had let the others tell increasingly uproarious stories about Newman – had even found himself featuring as a supporting character in one of them, and couldn’t help the warmth in his chest when one or two marshals he remembered came over to shake his hand and ask how he was doing. Sam had chipped in with remarks of his own here and there, sarcasm and exasperation doing little good masking affection and grief, but for the most part he’d been as still as Richard had ever seen him; especially once the crowd shifted into smaller groups talking amongst themselves.

It was going on 6pm when Richard leaned across to address Sam.

“I need to call it a night soon, Sam. I’ve got the morning shift.”

Sam’s dark eyes rose to meet his. “Sure. Let me know, and we’ll get going.”

“Huh? No, Sam, that’s not what I meant, I can get a taxi. I just wanted—”

“I dragged you out here on your free afternoon, I picked you up, the least I can do is drive you home,” Sam interrupted him, and Richard knew there was no arguing with him. Well, there was, Richard had started many an argument with Sam, had ended a few and won some, but he knew when to pick his battles. So he just nodded, leaning back in his seat.

Half an hour later, they left quietly, Richard saying goodbye to Sam’s team and then following him out, the mild evening air a welcome relief. The air inside the pub had become stifling, along with the atmosphere as conversation dwindled and everyone started sinking into their own thoughts.

The ride back to Richard’s apartment was as quiet as the first one, and Richard had to wonder if this was how it was going to be whenever they saw each other – if they ever saw each other, he realised, and was suddenly gripped with the urge not to let that happen. He knew, if nothing else, that the next case was waiting (the next case was always just waiting), and he didn’t want Sam to leave again without this… thing between them resolved. He had an apology to make.

So when Sam parked at the curb, Richard stayed where he was, unmoving, trying to find the right words and instead getting stuck on the most obvious and yet most unspecific.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted – and froze.

“I’m sorry,” Sam had said _at the same time_ , and was now looking at Richard with an uncanny expression.

“So I take it we’re both sorry,” he tried to lighten the mood, and even if that failed in general, he could tell Sam had relaxed by a fraction. “For leaving,” he tacked on before his courage could fail him, “or, well, for arguing before I did. For walking out like that.”

“I pushed you out,” Sam interjected, and Richard inclined his head.

“You did, but you were right to, but I couldn’t see why and it only made me angry with you. I get it now. Only thing I—” he cut himself off there, uncertain if he wanted to complete the thought.

“Only thing what?” Sam, of course, wouldn’t let him get away with it.

Richard sighed. “Only thing I don’t understand is why you were so angry, too.”

At that, Sam looked at him with an incredulous expression on his face. “Did it ever occur to you, Richard, that you were not the only one who would have liked for you to stay?”

Richard felt his eyes go wide at the admission (which, of course, for Sam sounded like anything but, but it was still what it was), but Sam seemed to have hit a point where it was all or nothing – and all his money was on red.

“I nearly beat him to death, Richard,” Sam continued, casting his eyes down in what Richard realised was _shame_ , and his heart ached so suddenly that his breath caught in his throat. “Sheridan, I… I thought he’d killed Newman, and I… I went after him. Cosmo warned me, but I didn’t listen, and if Royce hadn’t been there… not that that bastard took the shot with any intent other than to kill him, but it didn’t take. Not before I nearly killed him, though.” Sam looked up at Richard, then. “The wounds on Sheridan… the bullet was Royce’s, but everything else you saw on the photos we gave your specialists. The bruises, the contusions. That was me, Richard. I did that to him.” Sam’s voice was rough, his face still turned away, and Richard didn’t dare interrupt him. “I’m telling you now because… if something like this had happened while we were chasing you…”

“It could have been me,” Richard finished the sentence for him.

“If I’d thought you’d killed one of my kids, yes.”

“Why are you telling me now, Sam?” Richard prompted carefully, although he had a feeling he knew the answer.

“So you can decide now if you never want to see me again.”

“Have you apologised to Mark?”

“I have. And I will testify to it in court, too.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that if anyone had laid a hand on Marie, he’d have beaten them to a pulp, too.”

“I… suppose that counts as ‘apology accepted’?” Richard ventured.

Sam grunted. “Not remotely, but it’ll do. He’s not pressing charges.”

They were silent for a long minute, sitting in the car as traffic moved along past them.

“You didn’t beat me to a pulp, Sam,” Richard said quietly.

“And what does that mean, Richard?”

Richard smiled. “It means I’d like to have lunch with you. And I’d like to not wait another five years for it. Can we do that?”

“We can do that.”

The smile on Sam’s lips tasted like relief.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, I get nothing. I'm just borrowing the characters because I'm crazy.


End file.
